Video: Deaf child hears father’s voice for the first time

posted at 3:11 pm on June 21, 2013 by Allahpundit

To cleanse the palate, your feelgood video of the day. This isn’t the first video I’ve seen of someone deaf getting to hear for the first time with help from technology, but it’s the first one I’ve seen that features a child. Meet Grayson Clamp, born without cochlear nerves and therefore without a route for sound to get from his ears to his brain. His mom and dad adopted him in 2010 and made him available for an FDA trial that creates artificial cochlear nerves by sending electronic signals to the brain stem. The doctors were eager to try this on a young child because a patient whose brain is still developing might more easily assimilate a form of sensory stimulus that’s been unknown to him until now. That’s something that never occurred to me with the earlier video in which a 29-year-old woman hears for the first time: The experience is revelatory, but it must also be terrifying to an adult who’s never known sound until that moment. Hopefully little Grayson’s young enough that he’ll have no memory of a silent world before long.

No matter how high your expectations are here, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

I needed to see something happy after spending two days in jury deliberations trying to get two West Los Angeles Prius-driving liberals to agree to a guilty verdict for a violent, mentally-deranged drug addict. Thanks.

Hate to be a downer, but that did not seem conclusive to me. Not sure what he was responding to initially.

faraway on June 21, 2013 at 3:23 PM

The levels are probably extremely low so that he’ll respond but won’t be terrified.

He’s around three IIRC. He and his parents have obviously been signing, but the little boy has no spoken language or any understanding of sound other than feeling vibrations through touch. He didn’t even have the “regular” cochlear implant option. This is amazing.

Stop what you’re doing right now and listen. How many sounds are around you? The air conditioner? The fan on your laptop? A radio? Birds chirping outside? A fly buzzing around you? A dog scratching and its collar jingling? Cars passing outside? The mailman raising the lid on your box?

And it’s all happening at the same time. Layers and layers of sound. This little boy gets the opportunity to hear some of it, but think of the challenge to help him understand it.

And now, if the parents are hoping he’ll speak and not just hear sound, the hard part begins. Speech-wise, he’s millions of words (and sounds) behind typical children, and the parents will be constantly talking and pointing out where sounds come from in order for him to begin to understand what he’s hearing. I’d imagine one of them has already quit a job to stay home and nurture this.

God bless you UNC and God bless these parents for adopting that child.

I’ll never understand why people who don’t like the site, or just my posts, continue to read them. I’m not complaining; every bit of traffic helps. I just don’t understand it.

Allahpundit on June 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM

That’s because you approach the phenomenon as someone who seeks happiness and satisfaction. Meanwhile there’s a small but vocal minority out there who would wither and die if they didn’t have something to bitch about constantly. Thus, when they find something they hate it’s a feature, not a bug.

I have a standard response to such people, “Woohoo! I’m glad I’m not YOU!”

I’ll never understand why people who don’t like the site, or just my posts, continue to read them. I’m not complaining; every bit of traffic helps. I just don’t understand it.

Allahpundit on June 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM

I hear you.

I think the anonymous internet has killed little bits of our soul. At any rate, I love your snark, AP, and it’s part of the reason I keep coming back to Hot Air. No way you can be snarky with a video like this. That you include videos like this in your updates is another reason I keep coming back to Hot Air.

Also, I like to observe a conservative atheist beta male with a sense of humor. A rare breed, you are. :-)

I stop in daily and appreciate what you all do here. We don’t even have to pay for it!

It seems as if he immediately noticed the new sensation, and it’s possible that he was even starting to correlate some of the sensation with what he was seeing.

The problem is that the UNC people didn’t have a better method of demonstrating different sounds with different visual inputs.

For example, the father continued to talk to him over and over. That’s great, but it’s just one correlation, and there’s no way for the kid’s brain to begin to utilize the new sensation in an intelligible way immediately.

They should have set up a bunch of different things that allowed him to notice that the sensation was timed and different depending on what he was seeing occur.

For example, a hand clap, a bell ring, a table knock, a foot shuffle, etc.

In the long run, it probably won’t matter. The kid’s brain will sort it all out. :) :) :)

It would simply make for a more dramatic video – which would help with funding – which is necessary if it truly works.

Hate to be a downer, but that did not seem conclusive to me. Not sure what he was responding to initially.

faraway on June 21, 2013 at 3:23 PM

I definitely think he was responding to a completely new sensation. Hopefully, the changes in this new sensation will properly correlate with sound. The brain will figure the rest out.

It seems as if he just kinda shrugged and wanted to keep playing. To him, it might not have been any different than any of the dozens of new sensations that kids are constantly be introduced to at that age.

To him, it might not have been any different than any of the dozens of new sensations that kids are constantly be introduced to at that age.

blink on June 21, 2013 at 4:05 PM

It looked to me as if he was a little overwhelmed. He seemed to retreat to his little book. After a minute or two (maybe because it didn’t correlate to anything), he might have considered it a distraction. He still seemed a bit tense, though.

blink on June 21, 2013 at 4:02 PM

I agree that would have been a better approach. It’s obvious he has no idea of the directional quality of sound (which a hearing child gets soon after birth, I think – maybe before).

Since folks here mention people who just can’t see the good in things…. How long before some militant deaf cries signs that this is child abuse? There is a very small but vocal strong minority among the deaf that want to know why we would want to change this little boy from the way God made him……. *shakes head*

As an interesting contrast to this, my brother and his wife are deaf as are two of his four children. And they and their friends are vehemently against this type of thing. I was in disbelief of this but they explained that it feeds the assumption that deaf people are broken and need to be fixed and they hate that perception. I disagreed with them and pointed out the things my brother had missed because of his lack of hearing but he was adamant that he would not want this done to him and his kids. Th eother side of the coin that I never would have considered.

whoa and hey, I ducked out and came back to this? Sorry Allah! you and Ace are the best political gamers on earth. My jest was taken far too seriously but I will submit to having a thousand flees from your camel infest my crotch while drinking cheap warm beer as my penitence.

Have a good weekend and keep up the great work. My regret for the insult is sincere and the video was much appreciated.

As a cochlear implant recipient (from UNC btw) and one who had hearing/language skills before the progressive degeneration, let me explain what the early sounds were like….. recall the Charlie Brown animations with the teacher/adult voices? Whaa waa wwhhaa …. yet eventually with lots of fine tuning by the UNC implant team (and lots of reading along to audiobooks) I was able train my brain to correctly translate sounds, until following along most conversations now fairly easily and at a very high rate of comprehension– infinitely better than a hearing aid. This child has far more work ahead of him, but I am truly happy for him. (And no, the American Sign Language is far inferior in its ability to convey complexities and subtleties of language, so while it may be of some help, it is not equal or more desirable.)

People go too far with this copyright garbage. I agree copyrights need protected.. but some of this is just plain mean and greedy.

JellyToast on June 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM

You are way off base here. I recommend researching topics before you spill forth with such utter nonsense. You’re complaining about your own rights, you know? You’d apparently be open to ignoring IP ownership for the sake of a feelgood moment. You are a joke.

Rights holders are required to protect their copyrights, trademarks and/or patents. Every time an owner ignores any violation they are risk their IP.

Perhaps if you created something on your own you could relate. Protect your intellectual property like you protect your credit history.

whoa and hey, I ducked out and came back to this? Sorry Allah! you and Ace are the best political gamers on earth. My jest was taken far too seriously but I will submit to having a thousand flees from your camel infest my crotch while drinking cheap warm beer as my penitence.

Have a good weekend and keep up the great work. My regret for the insult is sincere and the video was much appreciated.

DanMan on June 21, 2013 at 5:51 PM

It was taken too seriously by AllahP, not by people like me – I thought your initial comment was hilarious, besides being accurate! :)

Well, you’re welcome. Thanks for the constructive criticism.

Allahpundit on June 21, 2013 at 3:27 PM

Oh, boo hoo!

I’ll never understand why people who don’t like the site, or just my posts, continue to read them. I’m not complaining; every bit of traffic helps. I just don’t understand it.

Allahpundit on June 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM

Why did you interpret DanMan’s comment so negatively – do you believe it’s impossible to believe both that your writing sometimes is convoluted & reveals navel-gazing/beta/OCD tendencies, and that you are a good, smart, humorous & entertaining writer as well?

As an interesting contrast to this, my brother and his wife are deaf as are two of his four children. And they and their friends are vehemently against this type of thing. I was in disbelief of this but they explained that it feeds the assumption that deaf people are broken and need to be fixed and they hate that perception. I disagreed with them and pointed out the things my brother had missed because of his lack of hearing but he was adamant that he would not want this done to him and his kids. Th eother side of the coin that I never would have considered.

The Opinionator on June 21, 2013 at 5:45 PM

You are right, and they are disgustingly wrong…if they weren’t created with the idea of hearing in mind, why do they even have ears in the first place?

People like that suffer from extremely selfish, delusional/unhealthy thinking…

As an interesting contrast to this, my brother and his wife are deaf as are two of his four children. And they and their friends are vehemently against this type of thing. I was in disbelief of this but they explained that it feeds the assumption that deaf people are broken and need to be fixed and they hate that perception.

The Opinionator on June 21, 2013 at 5:45 PM

I’m sorry, but it sounds like your brother and his friends have sought refuge from their internal hurts and hangups by declaring their deafness to be a jewel-studded virtue.

That line sounds almost exactly like what I hear from some sexual deviants frantically denying that they’re off the path of normality and they know it – “I don’t NEED to be ‘fixed’, I like being (fill in the blank)!”

Being deaf means by its very definition that one of your five senses is broke. Bee Are Oh Kay Eee, broke. And for most of human history if you were born that way you would stay that way until the day you died. The fact that this is no longer true is a testament to the incredible advances we’ve made.

We should all be rejoicing that God has granted us the brains to bring a ray of hope to what was an incurable, untreatable disability…instead of trying to hide from it like a bunch of Amish farmers who can’t deal with the modern world.